Injection plate for microstructure water cooling units for an electrical or electronic component

ABSTRACT

Injection plate for microstructure water cooling units for an electrical or electronic component which improves the cooling power of a microstructure water cooler by using recirculation channels for the removal of the coolant, so that the height of the fins of the cooling channels can be reduced in comparison to a state of the art injections plates without water recirculation technology.

field of the invention

This invention relates to a cooler for electrical or electronic components, in detail to fluid coolers for PC components like processors, graphics chips, memory units, voltage converters, hard drives and other electrical or electronic components, that dissipate heat, that are known for example from the patent DE102008058032.5 U.S. Pat. No. 6,105,373 and DE102004018144B4

DESCRIPTION OF THE RELATED ART OF TECHNIQUE

From DE102004018144B4 it is known, for example, that in modern computers, the electronic components of graphics cards and processors, the so-called CPUs, are inherently subject to high thermal loads which occur during their operation. Due to the ever-narrowing circuit structures and the increasing performance of these processors they heavily heat up during operation. To ensure a high and uniform computer power and to protect the processor from thermal damage, all of these were actively cooled. A conventional cooling air provides a cooler in form of a front fan that supplies the electronic device regulated or unregulated with cooling air. The heated air is discharged to the environment in general.

In high-performance computers this type of cooling has limitations. Particularly in large computer systems is the heating of the rooms where computers are set up a problem which is encountered with the use of air conditioners with high energy costs.

As an alternative to pure air cooling liquid cooler for electronic processors are available amplified, which comprise a bottom plate, usually made of copper, on which one on side the processor is arranged, while the other side is subjected to a stream of cooling water. This cooling water is, for example, provided through an injection plate with feed and discharge connections, with which the bottom plate is in contact.

Reference may be made here by way of example on coolers, which are known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,105,373, U.S. Pat. No. 5,239,443 and water. Thus, the one described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,105,373 thermoelectric cooler has a bottom plate and a multi-piece nozzle plate, wherein at the first side of the bottom plate an electronic component that needs to be cooled can be mounted and opposite the injection plate can be attached. On the injection plate, a feed port and a discharge port for a liquid cooling medium are included. For the distribution of the cooling medium there is a chamber formed in the injection plate, which is connected to the feed port and to the outlet holes or ejection nozzles. The outlet openings of the ejection nozzles or discharge orifices are directed towards the electronic component facing away from the side of the bottom plate, so that it is actively cooled by the cooling medium. The discharge of the heated cooling medium from the cooling space is formed between the outside of the chamber and the electronic component facing away from the side of the base plate.

Although this liquid-cooled cooling device has significant advantages relative to air-cooled cooling devices for an electronic component, it can, as regards the cooling effect and the replaceability, be further improved. It should be referred to the microstructure cooler DE102008058032.5, which preferably allows a further increase due to the new etching technology through the production of very fine structures. The base plates that are manufactured from etching process require very thin (for example 1 mm) materials, so that they can be screwed only with expensive thread insert with the top. Therefore, current microstructure cooler again are manufactured by milling and possibly additionally provided with a top and an injection plate. The bottom of an so produced cooler is between 3 and 5 mm thick and usually must be processed very complicated to achieve inside a remaining thickness of preferably <0.5 mm and a fin height of 2 to 3 mm.

Microstructure coolers of the current state of the art are challenged to allow a sufficiently high flow and the greatest possible cooling capacity. To allow a large flow rate, the cooling channels must have a certain height in the soil, for example, 4 mm, and a corresponding width, for example 1 mm, so that the microstructure cooler is not a flow brake for the water circuit. In order to achieve the greatest possible cooling power, the cooling channels may be as thin as possible, for example <0.5 mm, and the height as low as possible, such as <2 mm, so that the coolant can absorb the heat directly from the heat transferor point. However, so designed coolers have a very high resistance to flow, so that thus constructed cooler with conventional pumps used in computer water cooling systems cannot be carried out effectively. The currently in such coolers used injection plates are for the central water supply only, and do not include water recirculation technology.

Against this background, the present invention seeks to solve the problem of deteriorating flow with optimized cooling channel structure.

The solution to this problem results from the features of the main claim, while advantageous embodiments and further developments of the invention are noted in the dependent claims.

The invention is based on the discovery that the water flow in the bottom of a micro-structure cooler cannot be improved since any flow optimization in the form of an increase or enlargement of the cooling channels leads to an expense of cooling capacity. Therefore, the micro channel technology known from patent DE102008058032.5 has been advanced and applied to the current manufacturing techniques for microstructure coolers, so that the cooling capacity of a bottom plate produced by conventional milling techniques with very fine and aligned parallel and flat cooling channels, is increased in both the flow and the cooling capacity by an injection plate with water recirculation channels

The performance increase is based partly on an increase of the flow in general. It is known that the performance of micro-structure cooler can be increased by simply increasing the pump power in the cooling circuit. The injection plate with water recirculation technology allows with a constant pump power an increase in the flow and thus leads to an increase in performance. On the other hand the increase of performance is based on the recirculation channels running not parallel to the cooling channel structure and so cause additional micro turbulences in the fin structure of the bottom plate which lead to local increase in the flow rate, which improves the heat absorption rate of the cooling medium.

Many current models are already equipped with an injection plate. However, this injection plate controls only the central water inlet and contains no water recirculation technology. It is possible to upgrade this microstructure cooler by replacing the current injection layer by an intermediate layer with water recirculation technology, so that for the same floor structure only by the increased water flow and the micro-turbulence, the cooling capacity of existing models is increased.

For the development of new models, it is possible that the normally conventional fin height of 2 to 3 mm for example, is reduced to 1.0 to 1.2 mm, so that in combination with the injection plate with water recirculation technology a constant or increased cooling power and flow rate is achieved along with substantially reduced manufacturing costs for the base plate. The manufacturing costs of a base plate will be the lower, the lower the fin height is, since the cooling channels are usually produced by milling cutter discs and with increasing fin height/channel depth the milling cutter disc will be damaged more frequently, due to bigger milling waste, the processing time is to be long, and in addition it often leads to visual defects (shafts, bending, breaks) in the fin structure.

The injection plate with recirculation technology will be, same as the normal injection plate be commonly sealed against the top with an O-ring. However, the sealing may also take place via an adhesive or other suitable sealing means.

Divergent from applying the water recirculation technology in an injection plate it is also possible to include the technology directly in the top of a microstructure cooler.

Depending on the application and system conditions such as the existing pump performance, parallel operation of several coolers (for example for multi-processor systems) or the cooling of other components such as graphics chips, hard drives, memory chips and other heat dissipating components, the recirculation channel structure can be customized.

SUMMARY

The invention concerns an injection plate for microstructure water cooling units for an electrical or electronic component

-   -   which allows the central water supply     -   which has attached recirculation channels on the lower side,         which are not parallel to a symmetrical parallel fins or channel         structure     -   which allows a flow increase     -   which provides additional turbulence in the base plate, leading         to a local increase of the flow speed     -   which improves the heat transfer from the base plate to the         cooling medium     -   which improves the existing coolers in the cooling capacity and         the flow rate     -   which enables the reduction of the fin height at constant or         increased cooling power and flow rate for new coolers         with which a fluid operated cooler for electrical or electronic         components can be improved in terms of the cooling capacity and         the flow rate by installing an injection plate with         recirculation technology above the base plate

EMBODIMENT

An exemplary embodiment is described with reference to the accompanying figures. In the drawings:

FIG. 1—Prior art. The CPU cooler pictured here shows the typical current CPU cooler art. The cooling medium is distributed through an inlet (1) into a prechamber (2), and from there through the injection plate (3) concentrically with one or two slits (4) of the fin structure/cooling channels (5) directed to the base plate (6) to escape from there through the cooling channels (5) outwardly and thereby absorb the heat from the heat source (7). The cooling medium is then collected and discharged via outlet (8).

FIG. 2—New injection plate with water recirculation technology. The pictured injection plate (9), has in addition to the already known centric injection function (10) the new function of water recirculation. The water return channels (11) extending not parallel to the fin structure (5) of the bottom plate (6) but also back and forth, thus allowing additional turbulence that acceleration of the flow rate of the cooling medium, so that the heat absorption from the base plate (6) is improved.

FIG. 3—Different versions of the new injection plate with water recirculation technology. Depending on the application, different structures of the water recirculation channels may make sense. This is particularly dependent of the size of the heat-emitting device (7) of the particular application (for example CPU, GPU, RAM or memory cooler) of the fin height/channel depth, the remaining thickness used, the possibility of water transported away and possible different heat spots on the heat-emitting components.

FIG. 4—Sectional view of a CPU cooler with the injection plate with water recirculation technology and reduced fin height (15) (compared to the prior art (5)). The cooling medium is distributed through an inlet (12) in a pre-chamber (13), and from there through the injection region (14) of the injection plate (20) centered on the fin structure/cooling channels (15) to the bottom plate (16) in order to be deflected from the cooling channels (15) to the outside. The cooling medium may then escape into the recirculation channels (17) and flow above the finns (15). Thereby the coolant sweeps above the fins and causes flow turbulence by crossing the flow of the outwardly directed cooling channels, which locally increase the flow velocity and thus improves the heat transfer from the fins to the cooling medium. The cooling medium is then collected outside (18) and discharged via outlet (19). 

1. Injection plate for microstructure water cooling units for an electrical or electronic component which improves the cooling power of a microstructure water cooler so that the height of the fins of the cooling channels can be reduced in comparison to a state of the art injections plates without water recirculation technology which has recirculation channels at the bottom for the removal of the coolant whose water return channels are not parallel to the normally symmetrically build ground structure made of oblique or curved water return passages that run transversely to the floor structure of the microstructure cooler, so that in addition to the removal of the cooling medium micro turbulence are caused, that increase the cooling performance of the microstructure cooler who is placed centered above the heat dissipating part of the microstructure cooler who has a water inlet part in the middle for the incoming fluid who can be mounted in a microstructure cooler as a separate part (injection plate)
 2. Injection plate with water return channels as described in claim 1 characterized in that it can be used as replacement part for existing microstructure coolers.
 3. Injection plate with water return channels as described in claims 1 to 2 characterized in that it can be designed in different versions depending on the required cooling capacity—flow rate gradient or depending on the size of the heat transferor component.
 4. Injection plate with water return channels as described in claims 1 to 3 characterized in that it may be implemented alongside each other as a single component and the insert in the top of the microstructure cooler. 